Students cast in Civil Rights-era film set in Lowndes County

Shown is the prop bus that will be used in Kevin Jerome Everson’s feature film about Black students who drove themselves and their classmates on buses to school in the 1960s. Based on the lives of his father and uncles, Everson cast 22 theater students from the Columbus Municipal School District in the film. Courtesy photo

Columbus Middle School theater teacher Chelsea Petty was teaching class one day when she got a message from the front office.

“They just called down to my room one day and said, ‘The movie people are on the way to your classroom to meet you,’” Petty told The Dispatch. “And I’m going, ‘Who? What?’”

Petty’s confusion was soon cleared up after a conversation with artist and filmmaker Kevin Jerome Everson, who said he was

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McRae is a general assignment and education reporter for The Dispatch.

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